Genius Hour

For my Genius Hour project, I decided to try my hand at baking my Grandma Joy's chocolate chip cookie recipe. Her chocolate chip cookies are legendary-- she brings them to every family function. They were at my wedding shower, wedding, baby shower, and everyone's birthday parties. You can't just eat one, but end up eating multiple cookies each time. Grandma Joy has the art of making her chocolate chip cookies down to a science, and even though I've helped her make the cookies several times, I have yet to make the recipe on my own. So, for this Genius Hour project,  I attempted to make her chocolate chip cookie recipe on my own. 

Overall, the process went smoothly. I had received my Grandma's recipe as a wedding gift, with some tips and helpful tricks. Grandma Joy uses a cookie dough "scooper" to make her perfectly sized cookies, and I was lucky enough to receive a "scooper" similar to the one she uses as part of her gift. I quickly read over the recipe and headed to the store. I was disappointed when I returned home that I had purchased salted butter, instead of the unsalted butter the recipe called for. Also, I hadn't let me eggs sit out to room temperature, as the recipe recommended, but decided to forge ahead with my Genius Hour plans. (If I had to redo this project, I would make sure to change those two things). 

Both of my kids enjoyed helping me with this project, and my son, especially enjoyed helping me with the mixer  (He's almost two, and I think he most enjoyed changing the speed of the mixer, as well as sampling the batter when we were finished). An additional struggle was that the dough needed to chill for two hours, prior to baking the cookies, which was fine, but that ended up pretty close to when I needed to get my kids to bed. So, the baking process was a bit delayed as well. The cookies tasted great-- not like my Grandma Joy's, but delicious still! 

I've incorporated Genius Hour into my classroom when I taught second grade, but I'm not quite sure how it would look within my kindergarten classroom. In second grade my students all completed sort of a modified research project. Each step I guided them through, as they selected their topics, asked questions, and gathered some research. Looking however, within my kindergarten classroom, I think that I'd need to start out with a whole class Genius Project, and work together as a whole class, and then maybe in small groups.. I am sure my students would love the idea of Genius Hour ,and gathering data, but it would need to be modified and completed with lots of assistance. This might be something we could further explore next year!